Virgin With Butterflies (13 page)

The funny thing about people that are different from you is how different they are. And instead of getting mad, the old boy opened up his big mouth that didn't
have a tooth in it, except one away back, and he laughed louder than anything you ever heard. It boomed out like the town clock.

Well, the old king sat there and stopped sewing on his machine to laugh louder than I was laughing. Then he took his feet off of the treadles and came running out, still laughing.

People heard it, and doors busted open on the balconies all around, and some men that was a kind of an orchestra for the palace grabbed their instruments quick and begun to play.

They were good, too. Fast and hot licks, jiving and sending—mostly kind of out of tune, but cooking. And the old king took both of my hands and danced around me, holding on and laughing and bellering, “Palace Theater.”

Then he led me into the little room. The others all crowded around in the doorway. Then suddenly he quit laughing and showed me the machine.

He had yards and yards of silk and satin and white stuff like cheese cloth and unbleached muslin, and he sat down like he was going to play the piano. He ran seams fast and then he ran 'em slow. When he got to the end of sewing two pieces together in a seam, he laid a piece of rose-colored ribbon flat on the seam and he sewed it down one side, and then, zip, right back up the other.

I never saw anybody more proud of what he was doing and I kept clapping for him. Finally, with a spurt of speed he shot around a curve and pulled up at the end of the seam and broke the thread and got up and did everything but take a bow.

Then everybody made a fuss about his little workout.

When things got a little quiet, I says to Mr. Bosco, “Ask him if he can work the attachments.”

But Mr. Bosco didn't know what I meant, so I thought I'd find 'em, and I pushed the king out of the chair and started to sit down at the machine, but that was a mistake. The reason I knew it was a mistake was that all of the king's people made a kind of hushed groan.

So I stopped before I had even dusted the king's chair and leaned over and opened the bottom drawer. There were the attachments, all done up in their box, even with the tissue paper still wrapped around 'em.

So I unwrapped 'em and held 'em out to the king, but I could see from his face that he didn't know what they was for.

I wanted to go ahead and show our hosts and their king a thing or two, but I saw Aunt Mary's face watching, and I knew that you don't show kings up, not before their own gang anyway. So I attached the ruffler, and they all watched like I was lighting a giant firecracker with a very short fuse.

So I bowed to the old boy, to show respect, and then I reached up and took him by the shoulders and sat him down at his machine.

I stood behind him and put my arms over his shoulders and put a piece of wide gold-colored ribbon on. I turned the wheel till it took the first stitch, and I left the needle down to hold it.

Then I stepped aside and clapped my hands and says, “Attaboy.”

He looked like he was scared, but he started pedaling. The machine began to do its stuff and when it came out
a ruffle you'd have thought I had rose up off of the ground and floated through a hoop.

Well, when they had kind of got used to this miracle, I performed all the others that Mr. Singer ever thought of—the adjustable hemmer, the zigzag, the hemstitcher, the bias binder and the buttonholer.

But they liked the ruffler the best. And like Wo Baby, they thought what I said was the name of it: “Attaboy.”

So, when the old king had ruffled about a yard of yellow ribbon, he put it around his turban and it looked pretty cute.

And, “Attaboy,” he says, and everybody says, “Attaboy,” and we all laughed and were very friendly.

Just then, on the other side of the fish fountain a big door opened and there was the prince, and, say, there he was, but what a difference. Behind him came the four sweets, but in green uniforms with gold braid and cords and tassels and, instead of their black hats, they had big things on their heads, as well as swords and white gloves.

And the prince, boy, he was something right out of Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves. He didn't look little now at all. He wore a tight coat like the one he loaned to me with long full skirts to the knees and slippers with silver embroidery and tight pants to the ankle and a head thing, wrapped on tight, with a little clothes brush in the front with a clip to hold it—diamonds it looked like—and a tight collar to the coat, buttoned up high at the neck. Everything he had on him was silver cloth or white, and on his chest were stars and little swords and square things lit up like State Street.

He stopped there in the light when he saw us across the open place.

“Don't he look beautiful?” says Aunt Mary, right by me. “He's like a child's dream of an Indian prince,” she says, “those big eyes.”

“Yes,” I says, and I chuckled at the corny joke I had just thought of. “Aladdin,” I says, “and his wonderful lamps.”

Aunt Mary giggled soft and squeezed my hand.

Well, it seems there were four more other kings visiting in the palace that they had forgot to mention, but they came to the banquet all done up in silks, too. The guests at the banquet had on more drygoods than Marshall Field's basement and each one looked spiffier than the others.

The prince and me stood together on the top step, both all in white and silver as it happened, with the old king on the other side of me. Aunt Mary stood one step below us, and in a long line sat all but two of the king's sons looking grand, all washed and dressed up in the prettiest neglijays you ever saw.

The extra kings came in with their bodyguards and were presented to the king.

By now I had learned what to do when you're introduced. You shake hands with one—just one shake—then you let go and you hold up your right thumb against your right forefinger and you kiss the place where the thumb joins onto your hand. He does the same on his own hand, and that's all. The king kissed 'em all with a lot of little kisses on each cheek, them doing the same at the same time to him. But they don't do it to foreigners, and was I glad.

It was a real pretty scene like Dorothy Lamour, but without Bob or Bing.

The king took my one hand and the prince the other, and two other kings took Aunt Mary's hands, and in we went to get dinner.

It's no use trying to tell all about it. They had a way of eating that made it hard to keep the grease off of my best new formal, and there was more and more food. And then they brought out something huge and big, cooked whole, that I didn't know whether to be scared was the lion I'd seen earlier, but it tasted like giant chicken. There was rice by the mountain and gravy boats I could have swam in, and some of 'em nearly did. They had people with a basin to wash my hands, and they brought it to me right there, and I sure needed it.

There was music by the same rhythm boys that I told you about, and girls to dance to their music. Their dances sure said what they meant and the king's sons did a couple of double bumps just to show they knew what it did mean.

A pudding as big as a millstone and just about as heavy came in all afire. It tasted sweet but I didn't like it, and there was something around it that was just exactly like some pink fishing worms that used to visit us in Mattoon after a rain.

While the old king was deep in talk with the prince, one of the boys got out of his depth and he bit a dancing girl's stomach so deep you could see every tooth of his on her. She screeched, and the king looked around and all the boys fell over and laughed. So the king clapped his hands and two black men brought in a big monkey dressed just like this girl that his son had bit, and the king told the boy he'd have to bite the monkey right where he bit the girl.

He was scared to, but after a couple of tries he did it,
and the monkey bit him on the shoulder a lot worse than he had bitten the girl, because it bled, and everybody laughed like at the circus and didn't seem to care whether he died of blood poisoning or not.

Well, when the talk was over and we had drank enough strong coffee never to sleep again, the prince stood up and clapped his hands, and it got quiet. The doors opened, and there was Bill and Coo.

They came in all in white, carrying a blue velvet pillar between them. On it was what looked like a cube of ice out of a highball with an electric light in it, but it didn't have one in it, though it sure shined like it had. And the old king took it and I knew he had bought it, and it got passed around by Bill and Coo.

Well, I thought it must be about over. But no, the king stood up and clapped his hands and a lot of people came in with presents for everybody, especially me, and I perked right up.

Each of the boys got up and came over to the ones with the presents. The oldest brought me a string of pearls and put it around my neck. It was longer than the ones I got Millie at Carson's for three dollars. He looked at me and talked soft in his own language. Then each one did the same thing, till I had sixteen strings.

The pearls were heavy and very nice, but what I didn't know till Aunt Mary told me was that they were real pearls, and it's funny, but she said that real pearls are even better than Telca that I always thought was the best there was—better but not so pretty.

The king made a long speech and the prince made a long speech, and the music got louder and louder. There
was a kind of sweet smoke in the air from some vases that had rubber tubes attached to 'em that the boys kept smoking. This smoke was heavy and perfumed and smelled like Mass at Saint Stephen's. I don't know how it happened but I do know that when I woke up, everybody was looking at me and laughing.

The king gave me a thing for around my ankle with green sets in it and I said thank you to everybody. Aunt Mary and I said goodnight and walked out of the room very dignified.

In bed I could still hear the party going, with yelps and shrieks and hollering from the boys. I could hear the noise even in my dreams. Then it was time to get up and go to India where I hoped people wouldn't make so much noise and they didn't.

When we went to where the plane was, standing there ready to fly, all the Soodans for miles around came to see us off. They came on camels and horses and mules and their feet to see us fly.

Mr. Bosco was there watching the sweets load the gold that the prince had gotten for the ice cube, and some men with long rifles were standing around.

We were waiting for the king to come to say goodbye, and little did we know what we were to see when he did come. Of course it wasn't so funny to anybody but Aunt Mary and me, and we wouldn't have laughed for anything. But it sure took control.

All of the boys came galloping up on their horses and they smarted off all over the desert, and if I turned away while one of 'em was standing on his head at a dead gallop around the plane, all the others would laugh at him.

“Nice boys,” says Mr. Bosco, “they love you very much.”

“But where's the oldest, the one with the black beard parted in the middle, the one that caught me yesterday when I slid off of Wo Baby?”

“You'll see,” said Mr. Bosco. “He's going to do something. It is a secret.”

“Then how do you know it?” I says.

“I know everything,” he says.

“Where's the king?” I says. “He's late.”

“He will come,” he says, “but he's very busy.”

“That's a lot of gold there,” I says.

“We are taking it back to the prince's brother,” he says.

“It must be quite a lot,” I says, “all this plus what he got for the stuff in America. What's his brother going to do with so much?”

“Can you keep a secret?” says Mr. Bosco. “You will not tell Aunt Mary?” he says.

“No,” I says.

“You are going to be a princess, so I will tell you. Prince's big brother,” he said, “wants much money. The prince goes to get it. Big brother, he loves the Japanese very much because the Japanese have much money. Big brother has a big state with much flat land—very nice, no jungle. The Japanese like flat land very much—it's nice for war.”

“You mean they want to fight the war right there on his state?” I says. “Who with?”

“Oh, no,” he says and he laughed. “You see this plane? It can't land on the sea and it can't land in the jungle. But it will land fine on flat land.”

By this time the gold was all loaded.

“Tell me some more,” I says.

“Halla Bandah is coming,” he says. “Don't tell him what I told you. Don't tell Aunt Mary, either.”

I looked to where she was sitting in the plane, writing.

“Why not tell her?” I says. “She's my aunt.”

“Maybe aunt,” he says, “maybe not.”

And there was the prince, standing there beside us in his regular black suit, looking little again and kind of pitiful.

We walked towards the plane.

“Did you know,” I asked the prince, “that the oldest boy of the king is going to do something?”